Mezzano

At Mezzano people have always stacked firewood under the house, so that it dries and can be burnt in winter: a practical gesture that here has become an exhibition. It is called «Cataste & Canzei», it is permanent, and local artists arrange the wood at the characteristic points of the village; every year a new stack is added to the original fourteen. The village joined the most beautiful villages of Italy in 2010, and since then care for its historic appearance has grown. The name, after all, says something simple too: Mezzano would be the medianum, that is the middle one, between Imèr — from imus, the lower — and Siror, from superior, the upper. Three villages of the same valley called low, middle and high, like the floors of a house.

History, on the other hand, is less quiet. Mezzano was one of the four columelli into which the Community of Primiero was divided; from 1401 the valley went to the Welsperg, feudatories of the counts of Tyrol, and in that period German-speaking miners arrived here from Schwaz. In 1525 the inhabitants took part in the German Peasants' War. In the nineteenth century, between occupations and poverty, many had to emigrate overseas. Between 1927 and 1947 the village also lost its autonomy, joined with neighbouring Imer into the comune of Mezzano Imer, and then took it back. There remain to be seen the church of San Giorgio, with its onion bell tower thirty-six metres high, and some places that tell more than the churches do: the Strada de Molarén, which during the flood of 1966 was for days the only link between lower and upper Primiero, and the Pra de la Forca, where until 1720 those condemned to death were executed.